After I posted the previous item on the gorilla said to be rampaging through Kansas City, the original article was updated (same link) and the ape in question is now reported to be a "large chimpanzee" (pan troglodytes) rather than a gorilla (gorilla…
— is that you might also get charged with stealing the handcuffs. According to the Longview (Wash.) Daily News, a man who was arrested on October 1 managed to escape while being taken to jail, after he was able to…
Based on what we've seen so far," said Queens Education Department spokesman David Cantor, "this shouldn't have happened." He seemed to be leaving open the possibility that, when all the facts were in, he might take the position that leading…
Alfred Hightower had been on the run since 2007, when a warrant was issued for his arrest on drug-dealing charges. Hightower was apparently from Kokomo, Indiana, but had fled to Canada. His downfall, though, was that he spent a…
Given that Americans called 911 this year for emergencies that included missing shrimp, McNugget shortages, and (most recently) an unstoppable Playstation 3, it is somewhat reassuring to know that people in other countries are also defective. It may be that,…
Police in Roxbury, Massachusetts, said that an exasperated mother called 911 on Saturday, saying she could not get her 14-year-old son to stop playing "Grand Theft Auto" and go to sleep. Angela Mejia said she woke up at 2:30 a.m., hours…
In 2007, Daniel Freitag got a speeding ticket in West Salem, Ohio. Patrolman Ken Roth said he had measured Freitag's speed with a radar gun, but that evidence was thrown out on appeal because the state had failed to provide…
Apparently hoping to save money on law enforcement costs, the county of Essex in the UK has deployed eight life-size cardboard cutouts of police officers, which have been posted in various shops "to deter and confuse would-be criminals." Cardboard cutouts…
Last week I mentioned that I was having trouble finding the law that Kenneth Herron supposedly violated when he infiltrated the bear grotto at the San Francisco Zoo. I speculated that it might have been section 5.08 of the San…
The Chicago Tribune reports that judges in Cook County, Illinois, have been dismissing speeding tickets issued to drivers whose speed was measured with laser guns rather than boring old radar. The traffic court has taken the position that evidence gathered…